Project by Virginia Italia @virginia.italia
In Yucatán, the presence of the hacienda hotel, exemplified by Hacienda Temozón Sur, is embedded within a system of cultural tourism that transforms histories of exploitation into consumable experiences. Emerging from the legacy of the henequen economy, it operates within a regional network of elite tourism tied to routes connecting nearby Mayan ruins, cenotes, and curated “authenticity”, where heritage is aestheticized and selectively performed. Within this framework, value is extracted not only from land and labor but from the controlled representation of culture itself.
Positioned against this condition, milpa-claimed territories redistribute local agency in Temozón Sur by rendering the domestic backyard as a site of governance. Through Indigenous Mayan practices, milpa cultivation, melipona beekeeping, and craft economies, boundaries are reworked from instruments of exclusion into productive interfaces, shifting power from exclusive ownership toward collective, land-based autonomy.
